June 2015 Day 8: traveling back to the US, closing thoughts on my initial Haitian excursion

Departing for my Ohio home

Therefore, after a mostly sleepless night (as I mentioned in the previous post, it was HOT until the AC cooled the room to comfort… and then it kept cooling until it was COLD)… we got up bright and early and piled into the car.

And then realized that the tap tap parked in the compound with us was blocking us in, and we had no idea where the key was.  So I got Erin into the driver’s seat of it and gave her a quick lesson in “stick shift in neutral and be ready to hit the brake” and Steven and I pushed the truck out and then back into the compound, so we could make good our escape.

In the prototypical Port-au-Prince way, we circumvented a huge line to get our tickets and check our luggage as my brother knew a guy who (for a couple dollars) knew a guy who could bump us to the front of the line.  We were running a bit late and it wasn’t worth the added stress, so we took the “pay to expedite” option, got all checked and settled in, and got to marvel at one of the best charades in the city.  The airport is one of the nicest and newest looking buildings in Port-au-Prince, to help give arriving foreigners the impress of a clean and improving city where things are run efficiently and effectively.  It is, unfortunately, a sham.  It also made for a very nice waiting room for the plane, what with brand new cafe offerings and some honestly delicious food for breakfast.

Passport exit-stamped, signed ticket in hand – I appear to be ready to depart the island of Hispaniola for the Unitedest of States

There are several layers of irony here, I think, that the American Airlines logo is falling apart a bit in the middle while trying to look so clean and crisp:

The American Airlines sign in the Port-au-Prince airport… needs a bit of repair, the ‘m’ is falling off. The sad fact is that the monies put towards beautifying the area in and around the airport is done to make things SEEM nice and good… while the majority of Haitians fail to see any governmental aid.

It was a long day of flights (made slightly longer as a tropical storm above and around the Bahamas, a black wall of stormy warning, had us divert further out over the ocean!) – and it turned out that my brother and I had been put on different flights for the final Philadelphia–>Cleveland leg of the journey, with me being stuck for a 4 hour layover beyond his departure time.  We begged and pleaded and turned the dial on our puppy dog eyes to 11… and I was moved onto the same flight.  A clean sweep, then: no travel problems for the entire trip down and back, on 6 different airplanes total!

Off the plane into Fort Lauderdale, glad to be back on US soil

Our parents were, in their typical lovely style, were there and beaming to see us home safely; my mom also did the typical European thing and had flowers for us both on getting back from a flight.  Given that Steven and I both smelled… seasoned, after a day of travel in various levels of heat… the sweet smell was likely a good addition to our trip home.

I was surprised to see my Subaru as the car to bring us all home, but it was a good thing: our luggage BARELY fit in the car, so we almost needed the roof rack:

Our folks came to pick us up in my Subaru – figuring that the roof rack might be necessary with all the luggage we brought back. Unintentionally, a very Haitian welcome – vehicles in Haiti make CONSTANT use of roofracks in safe ways (and otherwise)

I am not much one for souvenirs, but I did end up being given or buying a few things:

The Haitian flag and banana art were gifts from some new Haitian friends; the machetes were my gift to myself

There is also a concentrated art district in Port-au-Prince which does some simply amazing metalworking with, of all possible media, 55 gallon oil drum ends.  They get a picture of what you want rendered in metal and then they replicate it by hand from a single piece of metal.  I love DIY and actual skillsets; though I didn’t personally buy either of these (they came back with Steven), I am thoroughly impressed with their quality:

Some of the *amazingly* talented metalworking from artists in Port-au-Prince. They are given a picture of a logo or the like, and then using a single metal oil drum lid… they reproduce the symbol

In short: it was a busy week in Haiti doing as much good for as many people as we could in self-sustaining programs or through skills taught; but saddening due to feeling like our work was merely a drop in the bucket of all the deep needs in and of Haiti.

Retrospective on this trip, especially as compared with my prior abroad experiences

To step back from the chronicling of the important moments to to the trip, I want to close with a bit of a written reaction to my having broken my self-imposed moratorium on my being involved in international development work, something I put in place several years ago.  The causes for that are disparate, from having experienced both the depths of people not caring at all for local suffering in a given area (Zambia); to people caring so intensely for their perceptions of a local situation that all people in that local situation suffer more (Israel/Palestine).  Haiti somehow fits in between these – people care enough to send a lot of international aid and relief funding and material; but it is wildly mismanaged and/or corrupted away to nothing.  Further complicating things for me, I have for years tried to spend a lot of time thinking and acting on what I think matters most, or truly makes life worth living.  Many aid programs are aimed at this (clean water, for instance, is not an unreasonable goal to push for in all societies for all people).  Some other programs are, with noble intentions, trying to make poorer peoples more like Europe or the United States… and this isn’t always for the best.  There is an old line of argumentation, often called lifeboat ethics, which in short is worried that due to limited resources, richer countries should be careful about trying to help too many poorer countries.  Haiti is more of a lifeboat itself, in a couple of ways. Those in power and who have joined them consider their own little lifeboats (their walled off compounds with mansions and expensive cars) the only things worth saving, and do not deign to help their starving or sickly countrymen.  Haiti itself, though, is an island with limited resources.  It is said that in the 1950’s, the population reached 3 million people and it was declared that local resources could no longer support all those people.  In 2015, Haiti is approaching 10 million souls.  I am in the weird position of knowing that dependence on foreign aid is allowing the Haitian population to grow larger without any shared growth in their capacity for provision of services; but also not wanting to abandon all of those who are stuck swimming outside of the lifeboat.  Therefore, I am disinclined to want to work through the larger aid organizations which are often tied to certain cultural objectives.  That points me to want to work within smaller groups.

 

That said, smaller groups of aid and relief workers are not always free from their own foibles.  There are many well-intentioned but poorly-implemented approaches to what my brother calls the “weekend warriors” of international development work by small teams of people over a short period.  This sort of “voluntourism” brings well-intentioned people to a place where deep need exists; but as non-experts, their plans are very much a combination of “let us have a chance to see and experience the local culture” along with “well we can do A, B, and C to help.”  A, B, and C are typically either 1) low-complexity jobs which could have been done by local people in need of paying work (and with the price of plane tickets, the money that could be sent to pay for locals to work instead of flying volunteers out is often sizeable); 2) more skills-oriented jobs like carpentry (again, which could have been done by local folks to give them jobs); or 3) the more intangible benefits which come with playing with and paying attention to orphans or children in general (which is WILDLY important for those kids’ development and flourishing… but also somewhat less valuable if those kids won’t have clean water and food, much less a job, when they grow up).  And so you get the dichotomy of people who went and helped and DID something to combat suffering, and the heady satisfaction that accompanies that… alongside the stark reality that perhaps not much good was done, in the final tally.  The Onion, a satirical “news” source, really hit the nail on the head with their pillorying of Facebook profile pictures and abroad experiences.  For my part, there is nothing wrong with sharing photos or written stories of your abroad experiences (take, for example, this blog).  Instead, my concern lies with the inflated sense of accomplishment which is often felt by those who embark on their voluntourism trip, do a little bit of short term good, and then come back and never have a sense of the potential ill caused by their trip along the lines of the above.

Moving a few steps even less-involved than voluntouring, you have people who speak in impassioned ways about helping those in need, but lack some combination of actual skillsets; money to donate; or the will to make themselves change their own habits to support helping those in need.  From a good 5 or 6 years ago, I remember the below unsourced photo which decries the absurdity of claiming that social network slacktivism is good for much of anything.  “Liking” or commenting in a passionate (and typically uninformed) way doesn’t do anyone much good at all: it might make a person feel good for doing so, but as this image satirically points out… it isn’t making a lick of difference for those in need:

Liking something on Facebook doesn’t provide many folks in Africa with clean drinking water.  My frustration with people who act in a way that suggests otherwise makes my blood boil, and gives me whiplash from shaking my head in annoyance.

In short (or rather, long), there are MYRIAD ways in which good intentions can and do go awry, and I decided years ago to wash my hands of getting involved in that for a good long time, for my own health as I was too stressed and depressed about it.

THAT SAID: having outlined how many types of doing or wanting to help others go awry… this trip to Haiti was honestly a refreshing experience for me.  My brother, in partnership with local folks, put together a program which used 4 weeks and 4 different teams of volunteers to work towards specific, achievable goals.  They taught swim lessons, a survival skill for the inhabitants of a storm-battered tropical island; built a wall with razor wire around an orphanage to keep those kids and their few worldly possessions safe as they grow up; they fed the hungry which is very much meeting an immediate need but it was done as part of a locally-run, internationally-funded food kitchen which operates on a weekly schedule; and more.  I myself had the chance to go down and bring a skillset not possessed by (m)any volunteers or Haitians, and repair all the computers at that computer school.  I also got to help teach good practices for administering a classroom of computers, which will help preserve all the work I did for a long time to come and therefore enable more Haitians in Jacmel to learn there.  Even more exciting in a longer term sense: I have succeeded in getting a grant to be able to send down 15 laptop cooling pads for the computer school, to help combat the severe heat which is deleterious for electronics!!

I hope the above gives a better sense of my short summary above, when I said that “feeling like our work was merely a drop in the bucket of all the deep needs in and of Haiti.”  In many ways, my stark tallying is true, that we did very little compared to the towering heights of problems stacked against Haitians.  On the other hand, though, I am proud of my brother, and proud to have been a part of one of these trips: because against all odds, our good intentions were paired with good planning, and, I daresay, as a result we effected truly good outcomes in partnership with local Haitians and in ways which are self-sustaining over the short and long term.

Coda

As I close my chronicle-writing for this first trip, let me be clear: this will not be the last post on this particular blog.  I am planning to go back to Haiti next summer, likely as a co-leader for a particularly large group of volunteers alongside my brother.  I also hope to do a lot of preparatory work from home towards that end, and with a couple of sustainable energy projects in mind to bring down to Haiti with me.  Stay tuned for updates as the calendar draws nearer to our ~June 2016 trip to Haiti!

June 2015, Day 2: Mike’s Tropical Computer Repair; visiting rural Haitian hospitals

Getting to know the John 3:15 Guest House and its immediate surround

After sleeping rather heavily and also doing a fair amount of sweating, even in the air conditioned room… I awoke and began to explore my base of operations for the week ahead – the guest house:

‘Guest house au soleil’ (prints available to interested parties)

The walled-in nature of the property renders it more of a compound, one which is surprisingly (and to my thinking, delightfully!) self-sufficient.  The city power grid, as mentioned in the preceding post here, is terribly unreliable – and so the compound features the below diesel backup generator (and behind it is a well, while in front of it is a water tank)…

Rainwater is collected next to the diesel backup generator within the guest house walled compound. The parking lot held all manner of bikes, trucks, and vans as the week went on.  The well is visible in the background; but we only used it for showering.  All water we drank had to be bottled, to avoid severe gastrointestinal problems!!

… and while I never got up on the roof to get photos, the guest house also features solar panels and a large series of car batteries, so it will at the very least have lights and electric fans 24/7 (the bedrooms’ AC uses more power than the current solar array can provide).  The exterior of the house is very neat and clean, but pales in comparison to the gorgeous interior of the building, with its fun use of bright colors and my personal favorite – wooden paneled ceiling tiles:

View from the front door of the living room and dining area within the guest house.  A gorgeous building, with 3 square meals per day at only $55 per night.

Walking upstairs from the dining/living room area on the first floor you will find the two main bedrooms and associated bathrooms, all of which can get PRETTY warm on even a nice day (as I mentioned in the first post, concrete architecture doesn’t lend itself to weeping heat or humidity):

View of the second floor balcony (two sets each of bedrooms and bathrooms); the opening in the center left of the frame is to the roofed porch

Temperature and humidity within the second floor bathrooms… was a bad match for me, but I survived

The kitchen features some new appliances but the core cooking implement used is very forward-thinking for a Haitian kitchen – a propane stove (off to the right in the below picture, not visible unfortunately) rather than a charcoal grill as is the national tendency.  More efficient, cooks faster, burns cleaner, it is the hope of our teams and our local partners to help encourage the expansion of propane use for cooking over time!

The kitchen!

The bedrooms are eerily reminiscent of those I encountered in Zambia back in 2008 (featuring some mosquito netting, bunk beds, and the camaraderie born of close quarters and shared sweat), and were yet another bit of evidence in my life that “electric fans are one of the best things ever invented”:

The guys room for the week, complete with some long-expired treated mosquito nets for that Genuine Malarial Flavoring!

The view from our back porch was of one of Haiti’s gorgeous mountains and then a mixture of some sort of feeding program warehouse (mid distance in the frame); agricultural fields (foreground of frame); and humidity (all of frame):

The mountain and some sort of feeding program warehouse, visible from the second floor porch at the back of the guesthouse. What a view.

The first of MANY skinny livestock we encountered while in Haiti

Stepping outside the large rolling gate of the compound and turning left towards the main road on which we drove into town, one gets a quick sense of the uniformity of concrete as building material; the roughness of many roads off the main road; and the creeping desertification of the island in the absence of sufficient tree cover:

Our side street was a VERY rough road (some hybrid of cobblestone and rough dirt). Ubiquitous walled compounds all the way down, so we were in a relatively well-off part of town.

Walls are always topped with the cheaper option (broken glass bottles and shards into dried cement) or the more expensive option (razor wire) for added protection… but sometimes, our walls can’t keep everyone out of the compound:

One of our scaly roommates, running away from our team across some of the razorwire atop the compound wall. Perhaps a cousin to Ike?

Pausing from the current week of work to consider potential future projects: a vocational and technical school

One of the first tasks of the day was to jump onto the back of a dirtbike driven by my brother to go down the road to an unfinished building site to get the following photos.  There is the future possibility that we will try and create a vocational school teaching something between 9 and 12 different trades on this very site (the abandoned foundation of the replacement church building – the original church was destroyed in the earthquake, and this site was abandoned in favor of moving closer to the main road to attract more visitors).  Haiti has something like an 80% unemployment rate (which is INSANE), and this is exacerbated greatly because the easiest and most important subsistence jobs (farming, and to a lesser degree, gardening) are looked down upon as being the lowest of the low (Haiti doesn’t have a caste system, but if they did, farmers would be something like the Untouchables of India).  This is so sad to me, as the environment here is perfectly suited to grow many sorts of foods very easily – but our job is not to change the culture as outsiders, but instead to work with local people to help them decide how they’d like to proceed in bettering themselves and their neighbors.

The front view of the unfinished foundation and walls to the replacement church building; our trusty dirt bike steed

Therefore, given that this building is partially done, and that offering a variety of skillsets will enable the graduating students of this eventual school will go on to hopefully get jobs in their local economy but more importantly be able to help themselves and their neighbors over the length of their life… this is FAR more important than the “weekend warrior” mentality of many groups of people who go abroad to try and help others.  Playing with orphans = very important in the short term for those kids.  That pales in comparison to building structures and programs which continue to help locals far after the team of volunteers depart… so it is Steven and my hope that this vocational school might one day become an exemplar of this sort of project in Haiti.

A typical Steven for scale of the current building height (Haitians are to scale)

Diving into my main project for the week: computer repairs at the local computer skills classroom, called the “Cinfora Ecole Informatique”

Back at the guest house, the team departed for their first shift working on the razor wire to be installed atop the new wall built by previous teams, around the orphanage in Beaudouin (pictures and full story of that project will be in a later blog post).  I, however, walked down the street to the Lutheran church compound, which includes a local computer school for teaching typing and Internet skills to all ages:

The radio station (trailer on right of frame) and associated computer school (situated on the second floor of the building to the left of frame). At present, this new radio station is only an internet radio station, until funding can be secured (it costs upwards of $800 per month to operate a radio station in Haiti)

Haiti, as my first post indicated, DOES have some extremely rich folks; what I didn’t mention is that there is also a swathe of people who are doing pretty OK, not starving but certainly not flourishing.  It is my understanding that that “middle class” (which is really not a good term, as most of those folks do not have permanent work) is the people who mostly attend the classes offered in Microsoft Word and Excel, and Internet skills.  And that might seem odd, to support that sort of project a few miles down the road from where people are starving… but only by offering programs and efforts to help all people in Haiti to improve themselves and therefore their quality of life can things grind their way to being better.  I have a lot of building and fixing skillsets, but computer work is something that not many people can easily dive into doing… so this computer classroom, with its virus-ridden machines, was to be the core project ahead of me personally for the week.

The process was an interesting one – I used English and French, to explain to a NON-technical person, who then used French and mostly Creole to explain my suggestions, intended tasks, and questions to Alex, the teacher of the classes.  The computer classroom is the second floor of the building in the photo above; as you can imagine, with no computers running it was *hot* in there.  With laptops running and my running audience of 5-15 onlookers… it was **HOT**.  Nevertheless, I dove into the project.  To put it mildly, Haitian culture doesn’t understand (or possibly doesn’t care, I suspect the former) the notion of software licenses and the costs involved.  It comes down to “well I have this program/file, my friend needs it, so I will share it.”  This means two important things: 1) people use the bricolage sort of mindset to make their machines work with whatever software is passed to them, even if it is an illegal copy… and 2) therefore, computer viruses are passed around like wildfire.  As with everything else down there, my job was not to judge, but to help – so the machines were reformatted and wiped clean in most cases, after which I ensured that the correct anti-virus software and the like was installed.  Most importantly (and requiring the most strenuous of my French speaking the week long), I made SURE that Alex understood two key points about making the computer classroom hardware last long (at the very least they needed to prop up the laptops to improve cooling underneath; I will be sending 15 cooling pads with the soon-to-depart team of people going down next week) and the software to stay virus-free (by creating user accounts for students which disallow them from installing ANY programs, intentionally or otherwise).

The delightful little computer classroom where I spent a good portion of my week in Haiti. Note the projector screen (importan to show the students what is being taught, a great innovation on behalf of any visual learners in the group).
As you might imagine – it was VERY hot in there WITHOUT the computers running. Then we also added in the body heat of all my fascinated onlookers… and it was *hot*

Traveling to and visiting a rural Haitian outpatient hospital

Later that afternoon, we departed to do a couple of hospital visits.  Our group steed was this really new Nissan mini-bus, with some AWESOME (in my humble but correct opinion) steel push bumpers on front and rear.  As a general point, Haitians seem to have a national talent for welding (more on this later).

Piling the team into the Nissan van which served as our steed for the week

The diesel stick shift bus ( ❤ ) didn’t quite fit all of us, so Steven again took the motto “Safety Second” to heart and traveled the Haitian way – on the back of a little bike across some ROUGH roads:

Steven modeling the unofficial Haitian motto “Safety Second” on the way to the rural hospital

As per ever, the trip itself was very interesting and again showcased aspects vital to Haitian culture, not least of all… talented local artwork…

Beautiful local artwork on a random set of walls

… but also gorgeous natural scenery featuring lush vegetation and mountains alike.

Mountains and wilderness to the left; a symbol of the very real patriotism across Haiti reflecting on the windshield of our van. Haiti is a beautiful country in its own way.

We even got a relatively rare glimpse of the beach (Jacmel is a town on the coast, but many properties on the beach have the typical high walls and therefore block our view of the ocean):

The ocean immediately to our right, not typically visible during our time in Jacmel but often making itself blessedly felt for the breeze it creates

Annoying that the photo came out a bit blurry, but Haitian vehicles consistently continue to explore new vehicular frontiers of what is denoted by “overloaded”

Arriving at this rural Haitian hospital, we soon learned that it was actually an outpatient hospital and therefore didn’t have many patients.  At the time, this made some members of the team feel disappointed as they wanted to visit and show those patients that we care for and about them.  Interestingly, the hospital visit we did the next day caused many of us to feel like some sort of sick tourists, as we wanted to wish well and chat but the language barrier prevented us from doing more than viewing the conditions and then departing the room.

The Team at the rural hospital

A beautiful flowering tree…

… and the gorgeous yellow-and-black birds therein, which I managed to capture with my telephoto lens.  I *love* my Pentax camera.

The very first room we saw was indicative of the remainder of the hospital visit – a small cubbyhole of a room with “Laboratoire” (Laboratory) handwritten above it, we walked in to find a neatly painted but far from sterile area with a small table and a meagre handful of supplies needed to do blood testing and the like.  As I have said before and will likely say again though: this is fully in line in doing the best they can with what they have.

The “laboratory” for blood tests, which was neither climate controlled nor sterile so far as I could tell. As per many of the comments I am making along the way on this blog, I am not judging, merely reporting aspects of my experience which fell short of being the best they could be. In short: doing the best they can with what they have

a Creole health poster advocating for covering your mouth and nose when coughing or sneezing

Far more staccato in both its concerning but hope-giving elements was finding the below 1950’s era X-ray machine.  On the one hand, this means that broken bones and other diagnostic procedures are actually possible in an area where people don’t even have enough to eat… on the other hand, aside from the pair of protective lead vests in the corner, the room and door appears to feature zero (0) lead armor to protect the surrounding area from all the excess radiation given off in the process.  On the whole, a net medical gain for the patients here… and bad news for staff consistently working around the X-ray room.

The 1950’s era X-ray machine in the hospital (good) with some lead protective vests (great)… but the door to this room was normal and I couldn’t detect any lead shielding in the walls… so I worry about the health of those working adjacent to this room

The main surgery room was in really good shape, although one can definitely see a mosaic of different time periods from which the different donated equipment here was brought in.

The primary surgery (in French, “Chirurgie”) room at this outpatient hospital

Another one of the portions of the visit which was very depressing but “best that can be done given the circumstances” was the sterilization station for the surgical implements.  A hospital really ought to have and make consistent use of an autoclave, a tool which is able to quickly, efficiently, and thoroughly clean implements before they can (or ought to) be used on the next patient.  Below you see a manual cleaning station, which means that 1) implements stay in the open air and thus accumulate dirt and worse over time; 2) the cleaning by hand means it will be unevenly cleaned at best; and therefore 3) at least some of the people who come in for one surgical procedure… will end up coming back for the follow-up amputation required to purge infections from their body.

Attempted sterilization of tools (as this involves scrubbing by hand and then hanging to air-dry… the majority of these surgical implements are FAR from sterile)…

… and here is the sink with local water also used in an attempt to sterilize implements. This likely makes infection rates climb even higher, which is heartbreaking. After all: amputation is the #1 most common surgery in Haiti, required after a wound is badly infected.

Walking outside again we were an odd combination of impressed with what had been built in this backwater rural hospital; but also saddened that so many amputations and infections could be prevented if it were just possible to get the donated goods to the outlying areas of Haiti (see here: rampant corruption in the capital as primary blocking factor).

The Brothers Repas, outside the surgery wing of the hospital. That black bandolier camera strap I bought was worth every penny of $60, as it made carrying it at my side but swinging it up quickly and effortlessly to get a photo… was golden

Visiting a Cuban goodwill hospital (and its integral classroom for teaching Fidel’s Life Essentials™)

Our next trip took us to a Cuban goodwill hospital in the same relative area of Haiti.

An older-style Haitian license plate. Newer ones show a silhouette of the island and in French “La Perle des Antilles” (The Pearl of the Antilles)

Our security guard Peterson, about to demonstrate some Haitian fording as part of normal driving conditons

This Cuban (and apparently Venezuelan) hospital was very well-kept and meant to be welcoming, with artwork on the front and a Haitian flag featured prominently between the flags of those who pay for this service.

The artwork at the entrance to the Cuban goodwill hospital (featuring the flags of Cuba, Haiti, and Venezuela)

The building may also be an outpatient hospital as there was NO ONE there aside from 2 seldom-seen Cuban staff members.  This meant we got to see very closely the sort of conditions available to local Haitians – and everything we saw seemed to be very clean and well-kept, albeit not especially new.

The back courtyard of the Cuban hospital, which featured a basketball hoop (NOT what I was expecting from a Cuban cultural outpost)

Obligatory diesel Toyota truck with a snorkel.  Need one of these, one day….

A *gorgeous* Toyota Land Cruiser with a snorkel, hot damn I need to get one of these diesel 4×4 stick shift monsters here at home… one day.
One day.

The top floor of the hospital building apparently moonlights as a cultural education center, with a classroom featuring all manner of educational/propaganda about the benefits of the Cuban way of doing things:

One of the informative Cuban propaganda pieces in the “Klasroom” as it was labeled…

… Steven entertained himself (and me) thoroughly by saying thank you and goodbye to the Cuban staff in his most AMURKAN possible cowboy accent

On the drive back, we saw a couple of the ultra-rich mansions on the side of the mountain, which really evoke a certain sort of “amidst the wilderness” that is lost in the hustle and bustle of typical Haitian town living.  But to be sure: between pockets of towns and handfuls of houses, Haiti definitely has some areas of untamed nature.

A VERY wealthy person’s mountain-affixed mansion

Of interesting note, especially at the tail end of a visit to a Cuban institution, was that I saw 2 openly-identified American institutional donations over the entirety of my time in Haiti – in both cases, including the below truck, I saw a reused USAID tarp.  I am curious as to whether this means more US donations were food or other immediate-use items, or if Jacmel doesn’t feature much US-origin assistance.

The very few indications of direct American aid I saw in Jacmel was reused USAID tarps (in this case for a truck bed; in other cases for a porch off a shanty)

Summarizing Day 2

As I commented on Facebook that day,

Day 2: my developing country Spidey senses are miscalibrated. “Wear a long sleeve collared shirt to really stay out of the sun, it is worth the extra bit of sweat” is genuinely valid advice in Zambia and the Middle East… turning out to be not as valid in 90%+ humidity Haiti.

Additionally, it is fun listening to Creole and picking up plenty of French or derivatives in between other incomprehensible words. Especially satisfying to speak some rusty French to folks here and watch their eyes go VERY wide at an American who can speak more than American English.

Looking back on that experience, I stand by that appraisal as my general summary for Day 2.  It was a real pleasure to get to use some rusty French and be able to start a week-long process of making a HUGE difference for that local computer school; I also really enjoyed the visits we did to the rural hospitals and getting to see some excellent indications of the weird way in which most formal intergovernmental aid flows into Haiti and is either corrupted to the point of not reaching end users; or is not implemented entirely rightly.  I don’t have a good enough handle on the general effect of individuals and groups providing aid into Haiti, but I believe our experience was a good case study (bolstered by my brother doing 4 back to back weeks): you need to know local Haitian people and work with them to create longer term programs to have anything succeed.  Just giving items out might be a necessary stopgap in some cases, but doesn’t do anything to create lasting local improvement over time.  In short, good intentions are FAR from sufficient to effect good outcomes.

That said: it was even more enjoyable to be a part of my brother’s efforts in Haiti, aimed at creating programs and classes for local folks over the long term.

It rained 3 times in the month my brother was in Jacmel; 2 of them happened during the week I was there. I am not sure what this means or signifies.

June 2015, Day 1: traveling to Haiti, first impressions, “safety second”

Departing the United States for a (far) warmer clime

Having packed and prepped, I woke up early with my dad and departed for the Cleveland airport.  Loaded down with a backpack and a carry-on suitcase and a checked large suitcase full of donations (thanks to my awesome McMaster-Carr coworkers who contributed to this effect!!!) AND a gigantic overloaded rolling luggage bag of donations, I limped my way to the ticketing desk and checked in as much as I could.  I also found an unexpected simulacrum of some 10-ft tall Fender guitar artwork from my office, in the airport:

I wasn’t expecting to see matching artistic guitars in the Cleveland airport, to those guitars at McMaster-Carr

I haven’t flown in a bunch of years now, particularly not abroad – I had forgotten how offensively ineffective AND rights-denying the Transport Security Administration was.  Once beyond their security theater, I began a long day of boarding flights, arriving, and waiting for the next leg of the journey.  It is noteworthy that Haiti is VERY close to the continental United States – approximately a 2 hour flight from Fort Lauderdale, Florida.  The day was long, therefore, as I did the stupid dance required by the airlines to get the cheapest tickets (I don’t understand how they can charge less by putting me on 3 planes instead of 1, forcing them to pay 2 additional sets of salaries for all associated tasks needed along the way… but whatever!):

Jetway to the sky, 1 of 3 flights for the day

A delicious lunch in the Charlotte NC airport later, I was ready to sleep pretty soundly for the last 2 legs of the flight down to the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince.

Arriving in Port-au-Prince, driving towards the mountains

On the subject of the Haitian capital: Port-Au-Prince is a very peculiar place in a wide variety of ways.  Haiti is an island nation of ~10 million souls, and the sprawling capital and its slums adds up to a good 2.3 million of those people.  The fact that I mention “slums” is no accident, as before and then especially after the devastation of the 2010 earthquake (in which the Haitian government estimates between 230,000 and 316,000 people died… but this is widely disputed, and could possibly be as low as 45,000), the core of the capital’s commercial districts near the waterfront is surrounded by slums into the overlooking hills on all sides.  The climate was: VERY HOT and VERY HUMID (something like 95 Fahrenheit and 87% humidity as I arrived).  My very first view of the nation from the ground confirmed one of my suspicions about the trip, that I would be sweating…

My first view of Haiti, the barren grass adjacent to the tarmac

… sweating a lot.

The interior of the airport was a chaotic mass of Haitians and mission/volunteerism teams in general.  I walked towards the single luggage carousel (which, my brother Steven later told me, is a VAST improvement over his first visit, when there was a hole in the wall that luggage was through through) and kept an eye out for Steven, eventually finding him therein (which is a function of his knowing guys at the airport who knew he was leading back to back mission trips, and thus would let him in against the rules… and possibly involving a small monetary donation to their interests).  Insofar as I could tell over my stay and discussions with local folks, this culture of corruption and nepotism is EXTREMELY strong in the Haitian capital and within its government; it was my general experience that the corruption piece diminished the further away we got from Port-au-Prince, and the nepotism turned into more of a social network which didn’t offer rewards based on loyalty, but rather help based on shared ties.

(Given the number of noteworthy photos from the trip to Jacmel on the first day, each photo below has its own caption and may or may not relate to my interspersed textual musings and findings)

Our primary Haitian driver and friend Nathan, and Steven in the front of the car on the way out of the worst traffic in Port-au-Prince

Going from the capital to Jacmel is only 60 miles difference but involved a PILE of horrible and unsafe traffic; followed by harrowing mountain driving.

As part of the Haitian goverment’s efforts to make Port-au-Prince SEEM nice (and not fraught with corruption), they beautify the area with things like this iconic globe and hands statue. Not much comfort to those starving and dying from disease

First, allow me to explain in a concise way the generally-prevalent Haitian waltz between jury rigging and bricolage.  I use these terms as follows – jury (sometimes given as “jerry”) rigging means that Haitian repairs are often temporary at best, and certainly do not follow any sort of suggested maintenance best practices; this is in NO way pejorative, they simply do the best they can, with what they have.  For example – I saw the driver of a tap tap (a colorful Haitian taxi, see below for examples and details) jump out of the car during a bad patch of non-moving traffic, fight to pop the crumpled hood of his old Toyota pickup truck; and use a crescent wrench to tighten the alternator belt (which I could hear was definitely ailing) even more than it already was… which got him a little bit more electricity out of the engine of the car and kept it running, but in no way solved the alternator issue or the fact that the belt had been way overtightened and was not safe for continued use.  But what else could he do?  Bricolage, on the other hand, is starting a new project and using whatever materials are available.  The primary example of this in Haiti – the construction of nearly all buildings from concrete and cement.  This is in spite of the fact that these buildings are HORRIBLE at shedding heat or humidity; that cement buildings are MOST prone of any building materials to earthquake damage (this multiplied the effects of the 2010 earthquake more than any shoddy building codes); and that the high cost of fuel and heavy weight of concrete will drive up transportation costs for all construction.  But the island has less than 2% of its landmass with tree cover; and the primary source of cooking fuel is charcoal while gardening AND farming are regarded as the lowest of the low when it comes to jobs… so as you can imagine, the deforestation issue is not going away, and thus concrete buildings shall continue to be The Only Option.  Bricolage enables Haitians to roll with those sorts of punches in creative (albeit often unsafe) ways.

The first of MANY concrete walls with hand-painted artwork and advertisements (as it is FAR cheaper to paint than buying posters or the like for ads)

Haitian driving culture was something I quickly learned about, even as a passenger, on our drive through Port-au-Prince.  I don’t even know where to start, so I will dive in to trying to explain it.  The Haitian cultural practice of tossing trash into the streets causes lane sizes to at times shrink; jerry rigged car repairs are done in situ where the car… or commercial truck and trailer… broke down, so the lane it was driving in means lanes can AND DO get shut down at random and with no pattern.  Take those two things and then multiply them by “and then people will drive on sidewalks… or even into oncoming traffic… if it looks like that will get them to their destination faster.”  Oy vey, it made for an interesting experience as a passenger, if not a stressful one.  Yet somehow, it seemed to work, as we didn’t see a single accident.  This is aided by the Haitian variations on the themes of car horns, turn signals/emergency flashers, and flashing one’s high beams.  No one uses the horn to show anger; the horn is always (and constantly) used to say “here I am/I am coming” to warn people what they will be doing momentarily.  Turn signals and emergency flashers are left running constantly by some as a visual indicator of “here I am” and never used for turning (though sometimes for people stopped in a lane, which is thoughtful I suppose).  High beams are used, particularly by motorcycles, as a sort of high power/last ditch effort to make sure oncoming traffic sees you.  All of the above is mediated in what I want to call a shoulder-shrugging acceptance – people don’t get mad at left turning-vehicles which simply jut into traffic; they understand that they will only be able to turn if they start to turn and force people to stop.

Detail shot of some of the ubiquitous wall art

Artwork is very important to many people in Haiti, from walls to advertisements to tap taps; keep an eye out for it in this and future blog posts from the trip!

A mid-sized Haitian tap tap (a painted and WAY overburdened old vehicle used as a taxi). The different drivers almost seem to compete for the best artwork!  Christian religious artwork featured heavily on many of these vehicles.

One of the small scale tap taps, all of which seemed to be Toyota light duty pickup trucks from the early 1980’s with an extended truck bed cap to allow 14+ people to cram themselves on… or to grab onto the side… or to clamber up atop the bed… or whatever other sort of unsafe method of riding they can think of!!  Additionally: look at the placement of cars and their direction of travel in this picture, and try to determine how many lanes there are on the road here (I have no idea, and I was there!!!)

As a general point: there was a DELIGHTFUL number of diesel and stick shift vehicles in Haiti, as most of their cars are European or Asian spec.  The number of turbodiesel pickup trucks and iconic (and stupidly effective/reliable) Toyota Land Cruisers with snorkels… I want one so, so very badly.

A mountain of trash right next to the food for sale in the marketplace; Haitian culture RELIGIOUSLY recycles glass beer and soda bottles and **ALL** other trash is thrown onto the street and burned. It is not ideal in any way, but it is the culture.

The majestic mountains of Haiti are ever more visible, the further you escape from the INSANE traffic of Port-au-Prince

In this one shot, I managed to capture the motorcycle-specific Haitian cultural attitude towards driving. You use your blinker and horn to announce “I am here, I am coming” and then ignore any traffic signs, lanes, or lights in favor of driving however you’d like, weaving through traffic in any lane. Safety second, as Steven and I summarized the motto of Haiti.  Additionally; there were only 2 lanes here – so you’re seeing 3 cars across and 5 motorcycles in a 2 lane span.

From what I could tell, these are fairly affluent non-governmental Haitian citizens – clean and painted homes, all of concrete but without a wall or razor wire (ruling out foreigners or rich Haitians as living there)

A spot of hope – street lights (MASSIVELY important in increasing nighttime safety in any urban setting) but specifically powered by dedicate solar panels (an attempt at sustainable governance)

Passing though Léogâne

Eventually, we got out of Port-au-Prince (though there was no clean break) and into the contiguous city of Léogâne.  As reported by Haitian natives, this was the center of the earthquake, which isn’t exactly correct (see a future blog post here for a closer examination of the earthquake, the background for much of Haitian life and change in the past 5 years).  For the duration of my trip through, however, I merely noted fewer buildings with wider spacing between them; piles of dirt/debris/rubble; and the very arresting fact of desertification of Haiti due to no trees, much less the lack of good forest and soil management practices.

A few of the now-standing buildings in Léogâne

A car with non-functioning lighting; an overloaded tap tap crawling along; significant vegetation with VERY few trees and visible desertification of the soil as a result; and the trash on the side of the road. Many Haitian facts of life, in one photo

Moonrise and sunset on our first night in Haiti. The blue words spraypainted on the second floor of the building at the left of the frame is actually NOT graffiti – all locals paint their political campaigning onto walls and buildings

Into and through the mountains of Haiti – a harrowing nighttime ride!

Thusly the day of traveling took to its next form, a fast and furious ride through some twisting switchbacks with no streetlights; Haitian driving habits (especially a lack of using lights at dusk, only waiting to ignite headlamps until AFTER it is officially dark… yikes!); and having to be very careful to avoid hitting Haitian pedestrians walking up or down the mountain on the road itself (as all too often, the road ended with a guardrail and then a SHEER drop down to… very far down below).  “Harrowing” is how I described it at night intentionally – certainly woke me up pretty good from my travel exhaustion!!

The final view through the omnipresent fog of humidity, before we started driving VERY vertical, VERY fast.

The was one of the best photos I managed to get in the falling darkness of the VERY sharp curves on this 2 lane mountain road; the Haitian cultural tendency to use the car horn as a “here I am/I am coming” was used QUITE liberally around these no-visibilty turns.

Forgive the fall of night leading to a blurry photo… but 1) realize our HIGH speed through these treacherous mountain passes caused the blurring as well; and 2) it is a SHEER drop immediately beyond the guardrail here, all the way down to the town visibility below. Harrowing indeed.

Arrival in Jacmel

We were expecting to see Jacmel alight, but the 1980’s-era power grid was doing its usual “lack of functioning right now” black-out… so I couldn’t see much of anything of the city.  No street lights meant I didn’t get a very good sense of the buildings on the way to and within the town; at this point, though, I was merely ready to get out of the bouncy car (Haitian roads are intermittently non-existent or HIGHLY rough, so the ride was putting the suspension of that car to the test) and onto my feet.

And also to get some food at the Jacmel guest house where I was staying, which was delicious:

The first of many delicious Haitian meals – heavy on potatoes, fried and sugary food, but also delicious spicing (not too hot, very flavorful). Plus, calories were MUCH appreciated after a LENGTHY day of traveling.

Unloading the car was followed by meeting and greeting some of the folks on the teams Steven had to work for him that week (a pair of girls from Ohio State; and a large team from a Lutheran church near Chicago IL)… and then passing out.

My first view of the lovely guest house in Jacmel – my home and base of operations for the week to come

All told: a busy day of travel but an excellent introduction to many of the realities shaping my week spent in Jacmel, Haiti.